I was saddened to see that it took frank FOUR questions before he asked Betsy anything sexual in nature. Frank, you've got to get back into practice. Remember, you act all innocent in question ONE and then throw the sex stuff in question TWO. I think you need to do a few more interviews to get back into shape over there at Sexhill Trek or whatever you call that joint, Paynter.

But seriously, great job, and fantastic interview with a gem of a subject. I admire Betsy to the eyebrows, even if she didn't like Locke's battered women recipe--something we riffed on during a phone call when he was making battered chicken or some such breaded dinner--and especially since Ms. Devine was thrown out of her first prep school, the Mary C. Wheeler School of Providence, RI, the year I was born. I'm more proud than ever of my birth year.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GEORGE!

two minutes to mid-night and a post to wish George a happy June 14th birthday. Hey, honey, I skinned your blog for your present. There wasn't any other way to fix it. Hope you like your new look. Have a happy....

June 13, 2003

calling all template experts

if anyone can figure out what happened to george's blog, can you let us know how to fix it? Neither he nor I fooled with the template, yet somehow it's turned into a four-column free for all. huh? It was moved to the new blogger interface... but it had been working okay.

June 11, 2003

back to that

Against my better judgment, I go back to this, and point you to this new article, which declares Ethiopians are our shared ancestors. The writing is all over the place, and evolutionary scientists can't even agree on what it means, but I liked two quotes.

This one: We can conclusively say that Neanderthals had nothing to do with modern humans. - Dr. Berhane Asfaw, a co-leader of the discovery team from the Rift Valley Research in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

And this one: "The team concluded, 'In this sense, we are all African.'"

June 10, 2003

Anything But

Over on David's blogMarc Canter gallops in and agrees with my not-so-casual jab at the Jupiter business-n-blogging event, where anyblogger who's anyblogger is speaking, real-time conference blogging, blogging about bloggers blogging, and thank goodness for Halley, at least, looking up a cheesecake recipe or two.

If Halley only knew that Victoria Secret's annual sale is on and that all the good stuff is going fast, I think she'd probably skip out of the Jupiter biz-blogorgy and get to where the real action is.

No. Seriously. It's like this. What the best teachers of writing tell you--and I did have some of the best under Leslie Fiedler at UB--is this simple secret: Don't take writing or English classes to learn how to write. Take philosophy, take history, take music, take anything but. It is the context that surrounds your voice that informs what you say.

So too with blogging. Don't paint it as a discipline. Don't cloak it in a methodology, Don't sully it with law. Live and grow, be bold enough to say what you see, and powerful blogging will follow. And if it doesn't follow us into business, then all the better. Because business will have to rearrange its context to keep up.

So be careful there, Jupiter gang. I love you all, but you're giving me a grand ulcer.

I wonder why it feels like I just flipped top down with my feet on the ceiling all over again?

To say a blog is a proxy self would demand that you show yourself, non?

Those unsettling old corporate worries come to mind when I think of all that blogging intellectual captial in one place. What if something happened? PLEASE, Jupiter blog conference speakers and attendees, for the LOVE of GOD, take SEPARATE cabs home, SEPARATE flights home. Don't stay in the same HOTELS. We could lose everything we've built up in one fell swoop!

Anyone know where the restroom is?

I signed up for the distance learning panel called, "Stop talking about blogging and blog."

It is right after the session called, "You see me, but I don't see you."

I think I'm losing my mind.

I think two classes of bloggers will emerge: those who show themselves and those who replicate old media traditions, including conferences about disciplines that don't really have any discipline.

June 9, 2003

Nina June

When I was born, my father said, let's name her Nina June, the "I" in Nina being a long I, not a short i.

NineofJune, Nina June, that was my father's sense of humor. Quiet and stealth, and when he'd slide one in to home plate, he caught everyone off guard. My brother inherited that ability. He doesn't say much, but when he pipes up with the wisecrack, it's always the one thing you wouldn't have thought of. That rare breed of sense of humor represents an uncanny way of connecting with people--humor improvisation. Read the moment, interpret it back, surprise them all.

So I wasn't named Nina June, but I was named Jeneane, which is close enough to June 9 in its own right to have made my father happy.

I have always loved my name.

All during my school years, the Heathers and Susans and Allisons in my gang of friends hated their names. "I hate my name!" It was the cliche teenage suburban complaint. Too few other worries. One's name is easy fodder for self loathing. Or drama.

I would always announce back proudly, "I love my name." Maybe that's because I know the story of my naming, that I was almost Nina June, that they let my sister have the honor of spelling "Jeneane," and that she was nine, learning "the first vowel talks and the second vowel walks," which explains her choice of the "ea" in the middle. There aren't many of us. Maybe that's why I like my name.

Maybe it's because I could have been Nina June.

Maybe it's because I still miss my daddy.

Now for what will be another year of my life. This year will be my 35th year without him. It's hard to face your own mortality at six because your father had to face his. Each year it gets a little harder. I've been on borrowed time for a lot of years--at least on the clock I've kept for myself.

It made so much more sense a year, a decade, afterward. With each year I lose more of his face, his voice, his touch, his music, his smile. Now when they come, they surprise me. Except for Nina June.